Independent Standard-Setting Boards

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board sets high-quality international standards for auditing, assurance, and quality control that strengthen public confidence in the global profession.

The International Accounting Education Standards Board establishes standards, in the area of professional accounting education, that prescribe technical competence and professional skills, values, ethics, and attitudes.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board develops standards, guidance, and resources for use by public sector entities around the world for preparation of general purpose financial statements.

Ethics

Unethical business practices harm organizations and economies. Large-scale business failures such as Enron—as well as the more recent failures related to the global financial crisis—highlight the consequences of unethical business practices and amoral management. Professional accountants, as stewards of transparency and trust, and subject to a professional code of ethics, have a key role to play not only in upholding but in encouraging and influencing ethical behavior and decision making within their organizations. See the full overview.

The intersection of human rights and business is an important emerging area that no business can afford to ignore, and assessing and addressing potential risk is clearly also a role for the professional accountant .

Latest Articles

Assessing and Improving Professional Accountants’ Ethical Capabilityby Dr Cristina Neesham, Senior Lecturer, Philosophy and Ethics in Management and Organisation, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology and Associate Professor Eva Tsahuridu, Industry Fellow, School of Accounting, RMIT University | April 17, 2018

Professional accountants are regularly confronted with ethical choices and moral dilemmas in the course of their professional activities—a recent Australian study sheds light on the persistent ethical conflicts, tensions, and pressures that...

The new wave of modern slavery disclosure regulations require companies to disclose audits and associated monitoring mechanisms to tackle any human suffering arising from their business operations—a process accountants can play a play a role in.

Financial modelling that enables an understanding of how a Product-as-a-Service model can be viable and represented by financial statements will help to unlock new investment in new innovative and sustainable business models.

Ethical behavior is a core attribute for professional accountants; technology may have an impact on the details one needs to understand to be ethical but it does not change the centrality of being ethical.

Given recent proposals from the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants with potential changes for the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, small- and medium-sized practices need to start preparing for some of the more...